Door: BEING RESILIENT = BEING RESISTANT

If when we were learning to walk, we had remained on the floor for fear to fall back, we would have never learned how to give a step after another. The fear was not part of us back then, as our desire to discover the world was more intense than the hits of the falls.  However, over the years, instead of becoming more courageous by each reached challenge, we started to design "our own mental paralysis."  Moved like puppets by those negative representations of our self-image, we had forgotten how to keep the balance in our actions.  In such a way that, even if our bodies have learned how to walk, our minds still don't know how to direct progressively.

Think, what do X-man Wolverine and us have in common? This comics-book mutant is made of a hard metal called "adamantium" which allows him to self-regenerate, just like that, regardless of the seriousness of his injuries due to his confrontations; he has the ability to fully recover. We, on the other hand, also own a strong enough ability to reinvent ourselves despite the great hardships of life, such as: failure, rejection, sadness, frustration, criticism and humiliation.  This curative potential is called "resilience," whose main function is to absorb harm and allow us to recover from them.  However, we sometimes think that the only way to win is to hit without being hit; This in turn becomes a limiting belief since, in the road ahead will be facing strong contenders who are not under our control. That is why, despite our warrior attitude, we will unquestionably receive one or another beating, in which case we will require to unleash that inner power in order to minimize emotional injuries that these external factors could leave.

Let me tell you something, at the age of 14 years I suffered a car accident that caused me a deep wound in my right hand.  However, over time this was healing, instead of focusing on the small shortcomings I had acquired because of the seriousness of the injury, I decided to see how blessed I was thing was for not having lost my hand.  Similarly, every scar in you is a proof that you chose to reconstruct yourself instead of destroying yourself. Scars are not bad, they are reminders that wounds can heal. For this reason, when you feel pain sinks you into the abyss, it brings back memories of those same or worse episodes where you had the courage to get out of there.  These marks are there to show you that you can heal what apparently is incurable.  Unleashing your capacity for resilience means that like Archimedes, you will use a support point, this time not to move the world, but to raise your self-confidence from the depths of the pain.

Being resilient is synonymous with being resistant. Resilience is therefore responsible for transforming damage in improvements.  In addition, being resilient we also learn how to mold ourselves in the fire, not to burn in it.  Therefore, do not pretend to walk through life without any kind of scratch, since these are inevitable; in fact, they are necessary to discover your ability of adaptation and recovery.  Remember your inner child, that one who learned that the ground could push him upward.  If you were able to do it even being so fragile, what makes you believe that you cannot do it now? Leverage yourself on your powers of resilience and you will notice that what you thought was impossible to surmount, it is just a wrong representation of your reality. 

Ángela López, Author.

Spanish Translation